Movie memorabilia collecting has been a lifelong journey for me. I have mentioned some of the highlights here on the board, so if I repeat myself, just excuse me for being a doddering old fool.
I started collecting in 1966 at the age of 10 when I fell in love with Raquel Welch on the poster for ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. My Dad and I were at a weekend matinee showing of the movie (he was a big Harryhausen fan) and while waiting in line, he noticed how I couldn't take my eyes off the one sheet. He suggested that I ask the manager if I could have it after the movie had run it's course. I was very intimidated at the prospect of asking for something that special, but he told me that, "You won't get anything if you don't ask."
After the movie, I approached the manager and popped the question. He said, "Sure. The poster comes down on Friday. I'll put your name on it but you've got to come for it Friday because someone else might take it or throw it out." That was the longest week of my life. I couldn't get the image of that poster out of my mind. I made space on my bedroom wall where I was going to hang it and I counted down the minutes the entire week. When Friday finally arrived, I came home from school and parked myself at the door waiting for Dad to get home. It was pouring rain and Mom gave me terrible news, "Dad won't be home til late. He's stuck at the office."
I went into panic mode. I asked Mom to take me to the theater, but she said no, because she was cooking dinner. Even though I was only 10, I grabbed my raincoat and ran to the theater, which was slightly less than one mile away. When I got there, I was soaked to the bone from the rain and sweat. I approached the ticket booth, shaking like a leaf for fear that the poster was gone. The manager was there. He smiled and handed me the folded poster, which I tucked under my raincoat. I thanked him profusely and he told me to stop in for more posters because he realized how much it meant to me. I couldn't believe my ears. I ran back home in the rain and that tattered, water-damaged poster stayed on my wall for years. I have since replaced it with a mint copy, but that yellowed old one sheet will never leave my possession because it was my first and most special acquisition.
After that, my Dad suggested that I check the listings and start calling other movie theaters in the area. I became very good at it and soon had a dozen or more theaters that would hold their posters for me every Friday. When Dad would get home from work, I had a checklist and a route was born. We'd travel all over Queens and Nassau, NY, and I began to acquire a ton of memorabilia, including lobby cards and pressbooks, inserts and one sheets.
One of my favorite stops was a small theater in Roosevelt, Long Island. It was in a black neighborhood and the manager there became a fast friend. He almost exclusively booked low-budget horror films and I soon became the only white kid in the audience on Saturdays. I watched many an exploitation film there and grew to appreciate audience participation. I can't remember the manager's name, but he gave me NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD lobby cards, one sheets for BLACULA and DR.PHIBES and countless other gruesome gems, including those cheap Philippino horror films, BRIDES OF BLOOD, BEAST OF BLOOD and MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND. Those were the good old days.
A year or so later, I spotted an ad from a guy named Frederick S. Clarke, who published a sci-fi fanzine named Cinefantastique. He also sold movie posters. One sheets were $1.50, unless they were older (pre-1950) and then they were as much as $3.00 each. I had a newspaper route and made about $10 a week. My comic-book addiction cost about $2 weekly (comics were 12 cents then) and the rest I started to send to Clarke for posters, buying 5-6 per month. I bought many cool posters for $1.50, including FORBIDDEN PLANET, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, MACABRE, INVADERS FROM MARS (1953), etc., etc.
That exposure led me to a few other fanzine publishers who also dabbled in movie poster sales -- George Stover's Black Oracle and Gary Svehla's Gore Creatures. I bought from those guys on occasion and they were very helpful and knowledgeable. Years later, Clarke's fanzine became the internationally renowned Cinefantastique pro-zine.
One day, my Dad showed me a classified ad for a place called Theater Poster Exchange. He suggested that I write them a letter, which I did, asking them if they had any horror or sci-fi posters for sale. Several weeks went by and then a big box showed up at the door. I opened it and it was a treasure trove. There were one sheets for ARSENIC AND OLD LACE, THE SPIDER-WOMAN STRIKES BACK, THE LADY AND THE MONSTER, CULT OF THE COBRA, BLOOD FIEND, 2,000 MANIACS and an unused window card for THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (which I still have). There were also NSS stills, press sheets, lobby cards and a bill for a whopping $35.00.
Soon after, I bought a few items from Jerry Ohlinger and Howard Rogofsky in NYC and found a few dealers in Hollywood. Most of the time, I had to buy unseen because I had no idea what condition the poster was in and even what the design looked like. It was a crap shoot by mail. Eventually, a dealer opened up shop on Long Island. It was called the Movie Gallery. I was like a pig in shit. Every few weeks, I would beg a ride to the store and buy and trade posters with the old guy who ran the place. Little did I know at the time, but he conned me out of my classics, convincing me that they were worthless and that I should collect newer posters. I did buy many nice posters from him though, including a FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS one sheet for a whopping $7.50.
Then, I discovered girls and my poster-collecting days came to a screeching halt until 1981. That year, I married and moved to Ticonderoga, NY, where I became the advertising manager and art director for a string of weekly newspapers serving the entire Adirondack region. Several of my accounts were movie theaters and drive-ins and I soon became addicted to the art form again. I started to trade my layout skills to the theaters in exchange for their posters. I would use their pressbooks and press sheets for logos and graphics, designing 8x10 flyers that could be handed out and reduced in size for ad placement in my papers. For most of the 80s, I acquired all of the new release posters in this fashion, most of which I still own today -- THE THING, BLADE RUNNER, TRON and on and on...
Then, in the late 80s, I was hired as a feature writer and movie editor for United Media. Video had just been born and I created the industry's first home-video wire service, called VidPix. VidPix went to 2600 clients and reached 60 million daily readers so, it was no wonder that I soon found myself on every studio mailing list and the recipient of many daily shipments of VHS tapes and all the promotional material available. I attended trade shows across the country and never -- I repeat never -- turned down the studio freebies. In no time, I had a mountain of video release posters, presskits, transparencies, etc., etc.
Then, I discovered the internet and am still having a hard time getting my arms around the wealth of foreign posters that I had never even knew existed.
So, the journey continues....
